


Wear Your Demons Out

by Silent-Wordsmith (Shatteredsand)



Series: Don't Dream Too Deep [5]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Denial, Eliza Danvers' A+ Parenting, F/F, Gen, Guilt, Pseudo-Incest, Repression, Sister-Sister Incest, Suicidal Thoughts, Therapy, Therapy Only Works If You're Open and Honest, it's not incest if one of them is an alien
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 18:04:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11258109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shatteredsand/pseuds/Silent-Wordsmith
Summary: So you woke up with a problem, feeling watered down. It's lonely at the bottom, and you're about to drown. Hope that you can bear it, but you wanna run. The agony you carry is blocking out the sun, so breathe in. I know you want to fight, but I don't have the answers held against the night. So you woke up with a problem, are you gonna try? Nothing really matters when you wanna die. Keep breathing.





	Wear Your Demons Out

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the Alex Danvers Therapy Sessions!

Kara isn’t allowed to visit, Alex is in solitary until they can “decide on the best course of treatment”, but they tell Alex that she keeps trying. It’s one part reassuring—Kara still _loves_ her, even after she’s ruined them—and one part sickening—Kara still loves her, even after she’s _ruined_ them—but Alex would still rather know than not. That’s the worst part of her forced leave, the not knowing. No one will tell her anything about Fort Rozz, about Non, about what Kara is facing now—alone, without her, _she’s ruined them_ —and it’s driving her mad.

She’s aware of the irony.

Her shrink is decent enough. Alex would have picked him herself, probably, if she thought she needed a shrink. Straight to the point, usually. Minimum attempts at mind-games. Respectful, both of her status as a doctor herself and as one the best agents the DEO has ever produced.

So far, he’s been biding his time, waiting for her to speak first. He has the advantage there, they both know it, because stonewalling him isn’t actually going to do Alex a lick of good. This isn’t the kind of mandatory therapy where she only has to go for a fixed number of sessions for the sake of paperwork. This Section Eight, and she’s not going to be let off this particular hook until the good doctor is convinced of her mental stability.

But Alex is still feeling way to fucking raw to even attempt to communicate with another human being right now. And Alex is pretty sure that she doesn’t need therapy, she needs a court marshal and subsequent execution, so.

So they’re playing the waiting game, the both of them, even though they both know Alex is bound to lose. Has already lost, just by merit of her being here.

She’ll talk, eventually.

There’s not another option on the table.

OooO

Alex is a very good liar. She has to be. She’s been lying to everyone outside her family since Kara came to live with them. She’s been lying to them, too, since she was sixteen. She lied to her mother and her foster sister about her job for years. She lied to the DEO about her relationship with Kara—about the things she would do for her, the laws she would break, the orders she would defy—since her recruitment.

Alex Danvers hasn’t been honest with another living soul in over a decade. Hell, half the time she tries very hard to not be honest with even _herself_.

Alex is a very good liar. She has to be, she’s been trained to be. She can pass a polygraph, deceive with a smile, dance the lines between half-truths and non-answers. She is very, very good at it.

 “Why do you want to kill yourself, Agent?” He doesn’t pussyfoot around, Alex can appreciate that.

“I don’t. I’m fine.” Alex shrugs.

“Fine people aren’t found with a mostly empty bottle of whiskey and their gun in their mouth.”

It hadn’t gotten that far. Alex hadn’t had the chance. But, clearly, J’onn had had no qualms about reading her mind for the exact scenario Alex had chosen and then claiming it as fact rather than thought.

“That didn’t happen.” Alex says, because it _hadn’t_.

“No?” Heller raises an eyebrow. “Director Henshaw lied to coerce you into Section Eight?”

“Henshaw worries, it’s what he does.”

“So there’s something he should be worried about?”

“I didn’t say that. I said he worries, not that he should.”

“So he shouldn’t. Because you’re…fine.”

“Yes.”

“Your sister was just poisoned.”

“She was cured.”

“You weren’t concerned?” Heller’s eyes flicker down through a file in his hands. “You weren’t on-site during the antidote’s creation. In fact, you were MIA the entire time Supergirl was influenced. That seems rather unlike you.”

“It was my day off.”

“Your sister, whom you defied direct orders from your commanding officer to assist with her vigilante hero-ing, whom you argued with Henshaw over allocating resources for, and whom you have killed and nearly died for, was exposed to a dangerous radioactive material. An experimental variant on the only known substance found on this planet that could kill her.

“And you stayed home because it was your _day off_?”

“I wasn’t fit for duty.”

“You were drunk?” The question is so obviously leading that Alex is actually disappointed.

“I was sick.”

“Mhmm…”

The silence after that stretches and stretches and stretches. Alex wonders if Heller realizes that this is a tactic that both therapy and interrogation have in common. You let the quiet go on and on until the subject in question feels so uncomfortable that they start talking, just to make it stop. Alex wonders if he thinks such a tactic could ever work on an agent as thoroughly trained as her.

“Tell me, Alex, what did your sister do to you that had you sitting out on her rescue?”

“Nothing.” Kara hadn’t done anything. It was Alex. It was her, it was her, it was her. All her fault. _She_ did this. She did this to them.

“Nothing.” Heller nods thoughtfully. “While under the influence of a mind-altering substance that caused her to violently lash out against agents sent to help her, she was her normal self with you. She didn’t say or do anything out of the ordinary and in no way emotionally compromised you enough to declare yourself unfit for duty.”

He’s good, Alex will give him that. Even if he is wrong.

“Kara didn’t do anything to me.”

“Well, then.” He smiles like he’s caught the scent of blood in the water. Everything in Alex sits up and takes notice. “What did you do to her?”

_“This is what you **wanted** , isn’t it?” Kara’s voice is low and rough and ragged, her breathing jagged. **Alex** did that. Alex did that to **Kara**. “This is what you’ve **always** wanted. To be on your knees for me.”_

Alex closes her eyes, forcing the memory away. Chastises herself for such an obvious tell.

“Ah, there it is.” Heller doesn’t sound smug. Alex wishes he would. Wishes he was taking some kind of pride in puzzling her out, finding all her broken pieces, taking in the mosaic of shards Alex keeps buried beneath her skin and nestled beside her treacherous heart. But, no. His voice is low and empathic. Not doing this for his own self-satisfaction, but because he thinks it will help her.

There is no fucking helping her.

“What happened, Alex?” Alex shakes her head. She’s not talking about this. Never, ever this. “What did you do that had you so ready to die?”

“I’m not talking about this.”

“You’re not talking about much of anything. I can’t help you unless you let me.”

Some things cannot be helped. Some people. Alex knows this. Alex _lives_ this.

“I don’t want your help.”

“No. You want to _die_.”

“I told you that didn’t happen.”

“Maybe it didn’t.” The good doctor shrugs, nothing careless or casual in the gesture. Alex hates it. “But you haven’t denied that you were ready to, and you haven’t denied that you want to. And nothing I’m seeing or hearing is convincing me that you’re not going to eat your gun if we let you have one right now.”

“Get out.”

OooO

“Director Henshaw sends his regards.”

“Did they come with an assignment back to active duty?”

“They did not.”

“Then tell _Hank_ he can go fuck himself.”

OooO

“Kara misses you.”

“She shouldn’t.”

“But she does. You’re not just punishing yourself, Alex. You’re punishing _her_.”

“I’m not doing anything; you and Hank are the ones who are keeping me here.”

“No, Alex. _You_ are the one keeping you here.”

“Go to hell.”

OooO

“Tell me about Kara.”

“I told you I wasn’t going to talk about it.”

“So tell me something different. What was it like, being a fifteen year old suddenly getting a new sibling? An alien sibling.”

“I was like asking for a puppy and being given an IED.”

“You were unhappy?”

“I was an only child for my entire life, and suddenly everything was about a stranger.”

“But, now, you’re quite close.”

“I grew up, learned to stop being such a selfish asshole.”

Heller scribbles down a note; Alex rolls her eyes. Again. 

“And then what?”

“I took care of Kara, like I was supposed to.”

Heller’s eyebrow rises slightly, “That’s an interesting word choice. _Supposed_ to.”

“It really isn’t.” Alex rolls her eyes at herself. It was a careless slip, and Alex is supposed to be better than careless. Especially about this.

“You took care of Kara. You _take_ care of Kara.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“She’s my sister.” Alex has years of practice swallowing down all the incumbent feelings buried in that one word, none of them make their way into her expression or tone.

“But she isn’t.” Heller shrugs. “She’s not even the same species as you.”

Alex bristles instinctively, before her rational mind can tell the emotional over-protective side of herself to calm the fuck down before she gives the game away. “Kara is the most fucking _human_ being I’ve ever met, the fact that she’s an alien doesn’t make her less than!”

“But she _isn’t_ human.” Heller is too damn calm, so fucking coolly logical that Alex considers punching him just to provoke a reaction. “That isn’t a criticism; it is a statement of fact.”

“Do you have a _point_?”

“You were a young girl suddenly made responsible for this alien life, this—how did you put it?— _IED_. That couldn’t have been easy.”

“Is this the part where I’m supposed to cry and tell you my mom never loved me enough?”

“ _Did_ your mother love you enough?”

Alex could shoot herself for giving him that opening. Sometimes, her propensity for sarcasm really does come around to bite her in the ass.

Enough? Yes, maybe. As much as Kara? Clearly not. Not that Alex has any plans on telling Heller that.

“Parents play favorites all the time.” Alex shrugs. This wound is both old and new, scarred over and still bleeding. It only hurts when she lets it.

“And you weren’t your mother’s.”

“She got a brand new alien daughter, complete with superpowers. I was a little lackluster in comparison, I’m sure.”

“You were a prodigy.”

“So was Kara. She just wasn’t allowed to show it.”

“Does that bother you?”

“That my mom loved Kara more, or that she was forced to hide parts of herself in the name of being safe?”

“Either, both.”

“Yes.”

“Do you resent her? Kara, I mean.”

“I did. I got over it.”

“You ‘got over’ the superpowered alien that fell from the sky into your home and your family. You got over your mother loving her more than you. Just like that?”

“None of it was _Kara’s_ fault. I’m sure, given the choice, she’d have much rather Krypton hadn’t exploded in the first place.” Alex knows this to be a fact, beyond any kind of hypothetical. Alex has seen Kara’s definition of a dream-world, of the ideal world. It wasn’t Earth. It was _home_. Home with her family and her culture and her people and her _world_.

It’s no more Kara’s fault that Alex had been so easily outshone than it was that Alex had been so helpless against her own feelings for her.

None of this has ever been Kara’s fault.

“So, you don’t have any lingering resentment for her?”

“No.”

“Then, I have to wonder, what it is that drove you to do something so horrible that you thought killing yourself was the appropriate response.”

“And we’re fucking done here.”

OooO

“You have an exemplary service record.”

“I know. Too bad you’re not letting me put it to use.”

“You have never failed a mission.”

“I am aware.”

“You’ve never taken sick leave or vacation time. You have reported for duty every day, often even on days you weren’t required to. That kind of dedication should be lauded.”

“Can you _laud_ it by signing off on my return to active duty?”

“That depends solely on you, Alex, and you know that.”

“What do you want me to say? I promise not to off myself? Done; I promise.”

“I want you to tell me what happened to make that the kind of promise you need to make.”

“Other than Henshaw being an overly concerned CO? Not up for discussion.”

“I can’t release you from a psych hold until I know why you were put under one in the first place. I cannot, in good conscience, tell Director Henshaw that the circumstances surrounding your need for treatment will not repeat themselves if I don’t know what they _are_. If you want back on active duty, Agent Danvers, then you’re going to have to give me something to work with. Anything.”

OooO

Heller is back to playing the waiting game. Alex hates it.

They’re still refusing to let Kara see her, and no one will give her any actionable intelligence about what the fuck is going on in the world outside of Alex’s quarters cum prison.

She’s all restless energy, anxious need to do something. Her sessions with Heller are beyond pointless, hours of nothing going nowhere.

This isn’t accomplishing anything.

If J’onn wants her to stay alive, keep fighting the good fight, pretend that she could ever do enough good to wipe clean the monstrous thing she’d done, Alex is willing to humor him. It’s a more fitting punishment, after all, to have to live with herself in the aftermath. To have to look at Kara and the way Kara still loves her when she shouldn’t.

Suicide had been the coward’s way out, Alex can acknowledge that now.

But that’s not enough, apparently. No, apparently, J’onn needs her to suffer through staying alive _and_ being useless.

OooO

“I fucked her.”

Heller visibly startles at Alex’s abrupt ending to the silence that had been stretching on for longer than this particular session. “I beg your pardon?”

“That’s what I did, that’s why Henshaw thinks I was going to kill myself.”

“You had sex with whom?” He knows; Alex can see that he knows. She’s not sure if he’s going to make her say it to be a dick or because he thinks it’ll be _helpful_ , but either way Alex is pissed about it.

“Kara. I fucked Kara. I fucked my little sister.” Alex grits her teeth and clenches her fists. “Now you know, so fucking clear me for field work.”

“I’m not entirely sure I should. Not until we’ve worked to unpack that rather loaded statement.”

“It’s what you said you need to sign off my good mental health. The circumstances are never going to repeat themselves, and I’m fine.”

“If you were here for conduct unbecoming or, possibly, a fraternization charge, then that would be true. But you’re not. You’re in here because you attempted suicide. Those circumstances haven’t changed just because Kara is no longer under the influence.”

“Fraternization.” Alex sneers. That’s not the right word. It implies that there had been freely given consent. And there hadn’t been, couldn’t have been. “Call it what it really is, Dr. Heller. Rape.”

Both of Heller’s eyebrows rise to his hairline. “You forced _Supergirl_ into sexual relations?”

“Cut the shit, we both know that sex with someone under the influence isn’t _sex_ at all. It’s rape. It doesn’t matter that she _could_ have physically overpowered me, she _didn’t_. Because she was _drugged_. She could not consent, and I took advantage of that.”

“You didn’t know she was under the influence. As far as you knew, she couldn’t be under the influence.”

“That’s not an excuse. I should have known. She wasn’t acting like herself; I _knew_ she wasn’t acting like herself. I just didn’t _care_.”

“Because you’re attracted to her. And she was reciprocating.”

“Yes.”

“How long have you thought of Kara sexually?”

“I was a fifteen year old lesbian and a humanoid genetically engineered specimen of perfection moved in to my house. How long do you think?”

“And did you act on it?”

_A whimpering whine on the other end of the line, Kara as desperate as Alex has ever heard her. More. Hovering over the cusp on her first orgasm. Her first orgasm, the one that Alex had talked her to, the one that Alex was going to bring her over._

_“Do it, Kara.” Alex is panting, gasping, groaning, so close and so eager, and so damn **close**. “Come for me.”_

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” Alex squeezes her eyes closed, tries to find the line between acceptable and not and if she’s ever had a place on the right side of that line at all. “I never touched her.”

“Until that night.”

“Until that night.” Alex confirms.

“You thought she wanted you back.”

“I was wro—”

The world blurs, freezes, sinks beneath a foggy layer of…something. The loss of control is horrifying but nothing Alex can think to do is effective. The something moves her body, moves her mind, and everything is.

Everything is blurry and wrong and.

Alex isn’t.

Alex is.

Lost under the surface.


End file.
